Netanyahu gave Putin evidence that Iran was upgrading Hizballah’s arsenal for destroying Israel and plotting a terror front from the Golan. The Russian leaders was unmoved, refused to hear of any interference with Russia’s tight coordination with Iran in Syria.

Russian reconnaissance teams are going around the battle fronts and Iranian, Hizballa, Syrian army command centers in Syria to plot the coming warfronts. They are meanwhile cashing in on delays in US arms supplies to the Kurds to poach on American Kurdish terrain.

The launching Thursday, Sept. 24, of joint offensive operations by Russian marines and Hizballah special forces on the ISIS-held Kweiris air base – revealed here by debkafile - runs counter to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assurances to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just three days earlier that Russian marines in Syria would not fight with Hizballah. This new development places the Syrian war on an unprecedented and dangerous path for the United States and Israel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will discuss with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Sept. 21 the continued Israeli Air Force freedom of action against threats coming from Syria. This would necessitate coordination between the Russian and Israeli air commands to avoid accidental collisions between their warplanes. A deal on these lines, tacitly agreed between Washington and Moscow, enables US air strikes against ISIS. But Israel faces more complex threats derving from the Iranian and Hizballah presence in Syria, on which Putin may dig in his heels.

The Russian military presence in Syria on land, sea and air, must severely inhibit S operations against ISIS, especially air strikes and Israeli action against Iranian forces in Syria. Moscow may be extending its protection of Bashar Assad to Hizballah as well.

Ongoing world power talks on ways to stop ISIS are stumped, as they move next week from Moscow to Washington. Vladimir Putin last week offered three worried Arab leaders nuclear reactors and other aid, but in plans for ending the Syrian war - on which they pinned high hopes – no silver bullet was found for stopping the inexorable Islamist advance. When Barack Obama meets Saudi King Salman in Washington next week, he will not find a customer to buy his reliance on Iran, which has failed to pull the anti-terror wagon out of the mud.

Highly credible Iranian exile sources in Europe have revealed to debkafile that the Director of the Israel Desk of the Revolutionary Guards clandestine service was executed by a firing squad in late June or early July as an Israeli spy. Aged 46, Seyyed Ahmed Dabiri was his codename. His real name is not known. The sources report that a Guards martial court found him guilty of tipping Israel off on top military secrets, including the movements of Iranian military commanders in Syria, Iranian arms shipments to Syria and arms convoys bound for Hizballah in Lebanon.

A 200-truck convoy rolled out of the Hizballah-Syrian positions around the strategic town of Zabadani, early Thursday, Aug. 13. debkafile: Their exit, after failing to break the Syrian rebels’ grip on the town, marked the Hizballah’s first retreat from a major Syrian battleground in the three years of its intervention in the Syrian war alongside Assad’s army. The withdrawal followed visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif’s talks in Beirut Tuesday with Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah and with President Bashar Assad in Damascus the next day.

debkafile exclusive: On July 30, Hassan Nasrallah pressed into service the elite Hizballah Radwan Force, designed to conquer Israel’s Galilee, for extricating the combined Hizballah-Syrian armies from their month-long failure to recapture the key town of Zabadani - or even breach Al-Qaeda affiliated rebel Nusra Front defenses. This has become a make-or-break challenge for Hizballah, the test of its boasted prowess to win big battles, including a war on Israel, after failing to drive 1,200 Nusra rebels out of the 9-km sq.Zabadani arena, despite Syrian military,artillery and air support

Netanyahu still hopes Congress will throw out Obama’s nuclear deal, but is on guard for emergencies by a bid for a unity government and warning the armed forces to stand ready for unexpected regional changes.

King Abdullah has deployed almost half of his army for the defense of Jordan’s borders against threats coming in from Tehran and Hizballah accompanied by subversion and incitement to destabilize the throne.

Uproar in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has relieved Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Al Qods Brigades chief and supreme commander of Iran's Middle East forces, of his Syria command after a string of fiascos. He remains in charge of Iran’s military and intelligence operations in Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. This is revealed exclusively by debkafile. Tehran was shocked to find it was too stretched for troops and funds to uphold its commitments on four warfronts – Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon - without straining the reserves for combating a potential ISIS attack.

While the IDF targets Hamas for air strikes, the tiny Gaza Strip has become the only patch of land in the Middle East where Sunni ISIS and the Shiite Hizballah terrorists operate simultaneously though separately against the same declared foes: Hamas and Israel. These groups constantly change sides and escalate their violence, The new situation cries out for both Israel and Egypt to step in without delay, as Hamas loses ground to yet more radical and violent organizations, who are seizing control of the rocket offensive against Israel.

Israel’s wide-ranging military exercise this week had a hidden agenda of warning Tehran that Israel would not accept a fourth hostile army taking up position on its border if Iranian troops were sent to Syria.

Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah frequently brags that his 80,000 missiles can reach any point in Israel. He may have to compromise. His masters in Tehran are casting about urgently for ways to save the Assad regime in Damascus and halt the Islamic State’s inexorable advance on Baghdad and the Iraqi Shiite shrine city of Karbala. debkafile: Iran is eyeing the re-allocation of some 1,000 long-range rockets in Hizballah’s store for warding off these calamities. It is also weighing a defense pact with Syria to enable Iranian troops to come to Assad’s aid.

The US has joined the battle for Qalamoun. debkafile discloses that a US special operations unit, stationed at the north Lebanese Hamat air base, is directing unarmed Aerosonde MK 4.7 intelligence-gathering flights over the Qalamoun Mt arena, 100 km to the west. Since Hizballah is also operating Ababil-3 surveillance drones over the same battlefield, US-Hizballah coordination became necessary. For the first time, the US military is working directly with an internationally-designated terrorist organization – with earthshaking ramifications for Israel’s security and strategic ties with the US.

Behind the failed bombing attack on an Israeli military post in the northern Golan Sunday, April 26, hangs a big story: The bomb squad belonged to a new Druze militia, which Hizballah recruited, the Iranian Al Qods Brigades armed and whose mission was assigned by a Syrian intelligence master.

The coming DEBKA Weekly out next Friday shows this event to be a microcosm of Tehran’s tactics for muscling in on Syria’s million-strong Druze minority as the lever for broader regional dominion.

According to Arab media, Israeli executed its third strike against Syrian and Hizballah targets on the Qalamoun Mts. Sunday night, April 26 - shortly after Hizballah tried to plant an explosive device near an Israeli Golan military post. Anonymous Israeli sources improbably attributed the air strike to the Syrian opposition. debkafile: Israel was more likely warning Tehran, Damascus and Hizballah that it would meet terror and the arming of Hizballah with sophisticated weapons by smashing their long-range missile depots on the mountain – even at the risk of a showdown with Iran.